The majority of our wedding planning began with figuring out what we didn’t want so that we could narrow in on what we did want for the wedding. (Which I’ve shared in hopes of helping other brides find things that they might like for their own wedding; I didn’t want all the research to go to waste!) After we decided to go with the courthouse, Mr. Sugar Cube and I knew that we wanted to make sure our guests knew how much we love them, how much time we knew they were devoting to the two of us by giving up their weekend, and how much we appreciated it. After all, we couldn’t just say “Hey, thanks guys for coming to watch us be all lovey-dovey and commit our lives to one another forever, we love you. See you later; drive safe!”

We couldn’t think of a better way to show our appreciation than with food, as Mr. Sugar Cube and I love food. (Who doesn’t?!)

It took about 5 to 10 minutes for all of our guests to clear out and head over to the cocktail hour. This was perfect, because our ceremony ended at 5:40 or so and the cocktail hour was starting at 6:00 just two miles down the road. Once the room was empty, we headed back inside to talk to our officiants and take some group pictures.

Now you didn’t think I’d really go and leave the ‘Bee without a proper goodbye, did you? Of course not! I just had to delay my sign-off for a for a while, because we had a little something coming up that I just had to share with you…

Our ceremony was a unique blend of both of our faiths, so I created the outline myself with some help from our officiants and some of the hive members (thank you!). Our officiants then took what I created and worked together to turn it into a ceremony that flowed beautifully from English to Hebrew and from tradition to tradition. Our guests couldn’t believe that our officiants hadn’t met until 15 minutes before our ceremony started.

We haven’t really talked about our guest list before, and how we landed on the people that we ended up inviting to our wedding.

I think Mr. Narwhal and I had a pretty typical guest list compilation experience. We wanted to keep our numbers low, but at the end of the day have a lot of great people in our lives that we wanted to include and share our day with.

When it came to putting our list together we went by the following criteria:… read more

So far, Mr. Sea Monkey and I had spent our entire time exploring our surroundings and enjoying Florida. We had completed a couple of wedding related tasks, but we were doing it alone and had downtime in between.

It was nice and relaxed—I wasn’t overly stressed and neither was he. But upon returning from Miami, reality quickly hit us in the face: We were getting texts and calls that our guests were slowly arriving.… read more

The Cast: I brought my maid of honor, my mother, and my future mother-in-law and sister-in-law.

The Consultant: Her name was Kidist. She was the absolute best.

The Budget: I had in mind that I would be willing to spend up to $2000 before tax. Ideally I wanted to stay under $1000. For David’s, this price range gave me the greatest range of options, including the designer dresses at the store.

My sisters and I got ready at our parents’ house, then we all (my parents, my sisters, and I) took a limo to the ceremony. We got there about ten minutes early, which meant that I had some time to sit back and relax as I watched all of our guests walk in. It was such a cool feeling to be able to see everyone and know that they had traveled all that way for us.

Meanwhile, Mr. MC was inside the building making sure everything was ready to go and doing some people-watching of his own. Luckily for me, our photographer got a few pre-ceremony shots of him as well as some candids of our guests so I could see exactly what I was missing.

When the doors to our ceremony room were opened, our string trio began playing and our guests were greeted by the sight of an aisle runner covered in petals, a white draped chuppah, and programs on every seat.… read more